Starbucks Strategy Essay Example for Free

Starbucks Strategy Essay Starbuck’s Coffee is a multi-billion dollar company. It was founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington. It was a single store located in the Park Place Market area of Seattle. The idea started with three friends, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker. They opened a small shop and began selling fresh-roasted, gourmet coffee beans and brewing and roasting accessories. The company’s total revenue for 2013 was $14.8 Billion Dollars. Today, they have more than 21,000 stores in 65 countries and is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world. The company expects to expand to more countries and open more stores in the future. In this paper, I will discuss Starbucks Organizational Culture that has led to its phenomenal success, the effects of managements’ decisions on the company, the one key management competency of the company, and the success of the current CEO and whether Starbucks would be successful without him. Starbucks has many key elements in its cultural organization that has led to its phenomenal success. Some of these organizational cultures include: Legendary service, diversity, organizational structure, and organizational ethics. In today’s society a company must have adaptable organizational cultures in order to be successful. One of the major reasons that Starbucks has maintained its ability to be successful is that it maintains the ethical culture within its organization. The company’s business Ethics and compliance programs has helped the partners (employees) in taking ethical business decisions as it provides guidelines in the Standard Business Conduct, which help partners make ethical decisions. Starbucks is committed to providing legendary customer service, they even hired an cultural anthropologist, Barbara Perry, to help strengthen its foundations for customer care. (Schreiner, 2011). Starbucks has three ways in which it provides legendary service, they include: knowing the Running head: Starbucks’ Strategy  customer, decreasing wait time, and being on the customer’s side. Legendary services offered by Starbucks include: giving the customers respect by knowing their name and type of drink, reducing wait time by acknowledging a customer and keeping the line moving and finally being on the customer’s side. Starbucks diversity and inclusion are a central part of Starbuck’s corporate strategy. It embraces diversity as an essential component in the way they do business. Twenty-four percent of the top corporate officers are women. Thirteen percent of the top executives are people of color. The most impressive statistic of Starbucks is the company’s continued commitment to its supplier- diversity program, which tracks spending with minority-and women owned businesses. The projected spending with these companies is expected to jump to $140 million dollars this year. Organizational structure is the hierarchical arrangement of lines of authority, communications, rights and duties of an organization (Schreiner, 2011). Starbucks does not operate under a franchise, however, they do license storefronts. Even though the stores are licensed storefronts, they are still controlled by Starbucks Headquarters. It overseas all of its stores and this allows for more control over how the individual stores are run. It leaves little room for stores not to performing according to company guidelines. Organizational ethics is the way an organization should respond to external and internal environments (Schreiner, 2011). Starbucks is considered one of the world’s most ethical companies (Screiner, 2011). The company makes a conscience effort to be a responsible company and conducts their business in an eithical manner. It uses its resources, such as; community, sourcing, environment, diversity and wellness. It openly displays its commitment to being a socially responsible company by letting the customers know what  they are doing and displays their mission Running head: statement in each store, prints facts on its coffee cups and puts information on its company’s website. Starbucks as earned this reputation through its actions in all phases of its business and live out the commitment through both its mission statement and values. Starbucks has business ethics program that is used to protect its Missions’ Culture. It is used to assist the partners to make ethical decision at their jobs. The decisions of the management and its choices for the company has a tremendous effect on employees, customers and the business. Starbucks has created an environment that is very relaxing to customers. It is a one of a kind coffee shop. There is no other coffee shop of this kind. Everything within the Starbuck’s environment is relaxing, calming and tension relieving. They make it the perfect comfort zone. One key management competency that Starbucks manager is like to have is Leadership Abilities. An individual must have great leadership skill in order to lead others. Leadership is the Process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task (Schreiner. 2011). There are very few people that can become leaders. It takes a very special individual to become a leader. Leaders lead in ways that serve the greater good of the organization. Starbucks demonstrates servant leadership and goes beyond the needs of its customers to the needs of the community. At Starbucks, the company’s values and missions are inspiring. They always put customers first. They empower their partners and help develop their full personal capacities. Starbucks help develop their partners to also demonstrate servant leadership. The partners feel far more committed to this company and their values and mission. When the individual that run companies show concern, respect and care for their employees Running head: they get better performance from them. It can clearly be seen that Starbucks Leadership is exceptional, they take the time to understand the needs of their employees. Many can see the difference in the Leadership of company’s such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. They have poor Leadership skills. They do not respect their employees. The employees of Wal-Mart and McDonald’s do not respect their jobs, because leadership is bad. If they respected their employees, then one would not always see the protest for more wages, benefits and hors. It is clear that Starbucks is doing something correct. There has never been any protest of kind with Starbucks. Other company’s should follow the Leadership Skill of Starbucks. Starbucks most likely would not maintain its long term sustainability without its current CEO, Howard Shultz. Howard Shultz has been the CEO of Starbucks since 1987. As the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz made changes to the company at the beginning, that help set the path to its success today. The first change was to turn Starbucks into a coffee bar. He came up with this idea after vacationing in Italy and sitting at a coffee bar in Milan, Italy. He saw that it was a place where the coffee shop played an intregal role in the social life of most of the Italians (Wong, 2013). It was a focal point for the neighborhood, where friends met, mingled and stayed all hours of the day. Hence, this became the idea for Starbucks coffee. They later opened their first coffee bar in Seattle, Washington. He also introduced exotic coffee beverages such as espresso, cappuccino, cafà ©-latte, iced coffee and cafà ©-mocha. This was the first coffee shop to introduce these types of coffees. He also made the atmosphere clean, well-lighted, where people could relax and enjoy their coffee in comfort. The most effective change that Shultz made to Starbucks brand was to change the way the company delt with its employees, he implemented an crucial company employment training Running head: program. Starbucks is aware that the employee can make or break your company. Shultz stated that â€Å"friendly, effective service would boost sales (Wong, 2013). He instituted a training program designed to groom knowledgeable employees who would enjoy working behind a counter. â€Å"Service is a lost art in America. It’s not viewed as a professional job to work behind a counter† says Shultz. We don’t believe that. We want to provide our people with dignity and self-esteem, so we offer tangible benefits†Ã‚  (Wong, 2013). Some of the benefits Starbucks offer are complete health insurance for both full and part-time workers and stock options. During a brief 8 year hiatus, Starbucks had a new CEO Jim Donald. During this time Starbucks stocks dropped to 42% and they closed more than 700 stores and layed off more than 700 employees. After this downfall of the company, they re-instated Howard Shultz as CEO. He has made changes to the company that has made it more successful. These include calling their employees partners instead of employees, redesigned stores, introduced breakfast foods, implemented luxuries such as charging stations and Wi-Fi and most of all, he more than doubled the number of stores opened since he was reinstated as CEO. It can be seen that Starbucks would not be as successful today without the current CEO, Howard Shultz. Most other companies can take a good example from this Leader. References Daft, R. (2012). Management (10th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. Schreiner, E. (2011). Starbucks and Its Orgaizational Design. SmallbusinessWong, V. (2013). Starbucks takes Over Your Life, Boots Sales. Businessweek.

The Marshall Plan Essay -- George C. Marshall The Marshall Plan Essays

The Marshall Plan First and foremost, a great deal of Europe’s success would not have happened without its initial aid from the United States. After helping destroy so much of the continent, the U.S. pumped billions and billions of dollars back into the European economy through The Marshall Plan. It was named after Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who said â€Å"The world of suffering people looks to us for leadership. Their thoughts, however, are not concentrated alone on this problem. They have more immediate and terribly pressing concerns where the mouthful of food will come from, where they will find shelter tonight, and where they will find warmth. Along with the great problem of maintaining the peace we must solve the problem of the pittance of food, of clothing and coal and homes. Neither of these problems can be solved alone. (DeLong)† In the first two post-World War II years the U.S. contributed through this plan, about four billion dollars a year to relief and reconstruction. The Marshall Plan continued these flows at comparable rates and was a multi-year commitment. From 1948 to 1951, the U.S. contributed $13.2 billion to European recovery. $3.2 billion went to the United Kingdom, $2.7 billion to France, $1.5 billion to Italy, and $1.4 billion to the Western-occupied zones of Germany (DeLong). An astounding $15.5 billion had been provided to Europe before the Marshall plan was enacted (Wegs, 66). The availability of Marshall Plan aid gave European countries a pool of resources that could be used to cushion the wealth losses sustained in restructuring. Countries that received large amounts of money from the Marshall Plan invested more. Countries could buy the amounts of coal, cotton and petroleum needed (all of these were in short supply) when needed because of Marshall Plan aid. Great Britain used the Marsh all Plan aid to retire public debt (DeLong). The Marshall Plan did have strings attached however. Countries had to agree to balance government budgets, restore internal financial stability, and stabilize exchange rates at realistic levels. Marshall plan aid was available only if Europe was committed to the "mixed economy" with the market playing a large part in the mix (DeLong). On their own, some countries were able to rebuild or repair slightly damaged factories and warehouses. Contrary to popular belief, factories... ...re slow to get into the automobile production game. They refused to merge with other companies, instead vying to produce many kinds of automobiles, none of which got a great deal of market share. None until the Mini came along, breaking from old traditional large British cars, creating a new craze (Wegs, 77-78). Not all was utopian forever in Europe though. All good things generally come to an end, and in the 1970s, the economy began to flounder. But for nearly twenty years, the western portion of Europe rebounded from nothingness, surged in no time, flourished for many years, became a major player in the economic world once again, and truly rose like a phoenix from the ashes of war. Works Cited DeLong, J. Bradford, The Economic History of the Twentieth Century: Slouching Towards Utopia? (University of California at Berkely and NBER: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/TCEH/Slouch_Present19.html , 1997) . Kindleberger, Charles P., â€Å"The One and Only Marshall Plan,† National Interest, Vol. 11, 113-115. Wegs, J. Robert and Ladrech, Robert, Europe Since 1945: A Concise History, 4th ed. (Boston: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1996) 3, 12, 45-47, 65-79.

Employment Relations Essay

In the last 20 years, there has been a shift in the importance of Unions in New Zealand. The introduction of the 1991 Employment Contracts Act and the following Employment Relations Act 2000 allowed employees and employers the freedom to negotiate in a Good Faith Bargaining environment without the involvement of the Government. And therefore the unions and collective agreements were no longer mandatory to guarantee good work conditions. This year, a big example of Employment Relations involving Union and employers disagreements is the AFFCO plants lockout. Since February 2012, 1250 union members have been involved in 6 AFFCO plants lockouts due to disputes between New Zealand Meat Workers Union (NZMWU) and AFFCO. The disagreement finally ended in late May with an arrangement between the parties. This case study will use the Employment Relations theories to explain the relevance of the dispute between a fast growing company and the union trying to protect its member’s rights in the current employment environment. Earlier this year the media spotlight turned to the dispute between AFFCO, a meat processing organisation and the New Zealand Meat Workers Union. It brought up a radical side of unionism that does not reflect the majority of Union activities in New Zealand. Who are the parties involved? And what is the conflict that caused grief to employees and employers really about? On one side of this dispute is AFFCO, a meat processing organization owned by the Talley’s family since 2001. In 1936 a Yugoslav immigrant, Ivan Talijancich, opened a fish shop in Motueka and bought a boat to supply it. His sons, Peter and Michael, took over the business when he died in 1964. Since then the business has grown and the family is now worth $300 million and Talley’s Group owns: eight meat plants in New Zealand (AFFCO), four fish processing plants, vegetable farms, 53% majority of milk processor Open Country, Ice-cream factory in Motueka and the Rutherford Hotel in Nelson1. On the other side of the dispute is the New Zealand Meat Workers Union. The NZMWU was created in 1971 in an attempt to form a National Union to support meat workers and related trades. In the 1990s, however, another union was formed in the North Island, the Meat and Related Trades Workers Union of Aotearoa (MUA), allowing workers the freedom to choose between the two different unions. In 2005 a decision was made to disband all the members from MUA to NZMWU forming one single union to represent meat workers over the entire country. Since then sacrifices were made by its members through strikes and negotiations to achieve the good working conditions of today2. In February this year the meat processor AFFCO locked out more than 760 unionised employees in 5 of its North Island plants over a contract dispute3. Some unionised workers were kept in some strategic operational areas while the more radical union members were locked out. The union claimed that the lockout was illegal and it was an attempt by AFFCO to break the collectivism and reduce workers memberships, they accused the Talley’s family of being anti-unionism. In March AFFCO announced that all the union members that were still engaged at work would get paid holidays over Easter as long as they did not participate on strikes planned by the union. The lockout continued over the Easter Holidays. After the holidays all the unionised workers that were still allowed in the plants, including workers from the other unaffected AFFCO plants went on a 5 day strike. In May 2012 the Employment Court put the dispute under investigation in an attempt to end the 3 month lockout. The dispute finally ended late May when AFFCO and the New Zealand Meat Workers Union implemented a new collective agreement. Overall, the dispute over a new collective agreement lasted for 12 weeks with both parties unwilling to give up their power of negotiation. AFFCO had offered a pay rise of 4. 3 per cent over the following two years, but the union also wanted to protect its members from AFFCO’s efforts to implement new technology and flexibility in staffing levels. What later came to light, the New Zealand Meat Workers Union took AFFCO to the Employment Court over â€Å"illegal† random drug testing. According to AFFCO the drug testing was a way to protect its employee’s safety while working in â€Å"sensitive areas† of the meat processing plant. They showed the media photos of drug paraphernalia found on site. The AFFCO lockout is not the only case of a breakdown of management of Employment Relations to be highlighted by the media this year. Another example is the Port of Auckland versus the Maritime Union that led to its members striking and causing shipment delays over the whole country. Both of these cases show two different sides to the Conflict Theory Frame of Reference as described by Rasmussen, 20094. Each party has an opinion about how they work. In the case of AFFCO the Unitarism model is followed, and, in the other second case, the New Zealand Meat Workers Union follows the Radical model of the Conflict theory. The Unitarism model adopts the idea of all members of an organisation working towards its goals; therefore the conflict with the union upset the path of development. The workers are viewed as resources to the process and the management as the authority. AFFCO is a big privately owned company that is driven by competitiveness to achieve success. Being slowed down by negotiations over collective agreements with the union and being stopped to develop new technologies and systems to improve production and lower costs, AFFCO believed that the NZMWU were trouble makers expressing employee’s greed. This ideology was relevant to small, family owned companies in New Zealand where team work and loyalty to the group were for a long time valued above individual achievement (Rasmussen, 2009, p. 9). However today, as Alan Fox suggested, a number of factors had conspired to make the unitary view inappropriate for analysing the realities of employment relations policy and practice (Fox, 1973, p. 192)5. These factors included urbanisation, the increasing size and complexity of work organisations, the weakening of traditional attitudes towards authority, the growing power of unions, and a greater personal assertiveness and striving for individual achievement and success (Rasmussen, 2009, p. 29). Therefore, for a period of time between the 1960s to the 1980s the pluralist and radical models found more favour. The recent attitude of the New Zealand Meat Workers Union however, is described by Rasmussen 2009 as a radical model. This ideology assumes that there is no balance of power between employees and employers. It focuses on the social and class structures and on the attitudes and behaviours of the parties involved. The conflict between AFFCO and the New Zealand Meat Workers Union is a great example of this frame of reference. Even when AFFCO agreed with a pay increase of 4. 3 per cent over 2 years, the NZMWU did not settle, they wanted more for their members under the assumption that the negotiating power was still in the meat processor’s hands. Both of these reactions seem somehow to be â€Å"prehistoric†. Since the 1990s a lot of the relationship between unions, employees and employers has changed. First, with the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 making unionism voluntary and giving employees the options of personal grievance procedures. And then, with the following Employment Relations Act in 2000 that kept many key points from the previous act and added the promotion of collective bargaining and unionism (Rasmussen 2009 p. 102-103). With the introduction of the Employment Relations Act 2000, the legislative employment relations framework appears to be less controversial and surrounded by something of a consensus (Rasmussen 2009 p. 123). The main issue during collective bargaining in the last 20 years has been the communication between the parties involved, as reported by Leeanne Templer, 20116. Therefore, the ERA also creates the environment for Good Faith Bargaining. The Good Faith Bargaining reinforces employment relationships based on trust and good faith. Now, by law, an understanding between employers and employees (with or without their unions) must be clear, respectful and with open exchange of information. As described by Rasmussen, 2009, Good faith collective bargaining requires at least the following things: * That the parties have to agree on a bargaining process; * That the parties must meet each other; That they have to consider and respond to bargaining proposals; * That they must recognise and respect the bargaining authority of the other side and avoid undermining this authority; * That the parties will provide the necessary information to substantiate claims; * That they must take into account relevant good faith codes, the proportion of employees who are union members, and the circumstances of employer and union. As can be seen from the media coverage of the bargaining conflict between AFFCO and the New Zealand Meat Workers Union, it appears that a few of the GFB points were ignored. For example, the introduction of the random drug testing was not communicated appropriately between the parties involved and the agreement on a bargaining process was then rejected. While the act introduces the Good Faith Bargaining, it also allows lawful strikes and lockouts. In this particular case, the legality of the AFFCO lockout is debatable. The Union argued that AFFCO’s owners, the Talley’s family, are using this action to undermine collective bargaining and to retaliate against the court actions bought by the NZMWU. The New Zealand Meat Workers Union also felt that Talley’s wished to force its employees to relinquish their union memberships. The Employment Relations Act defines that strikes and lockouts are lawful if: * Thy are in support of a collective agreement; and * The employees concerned are not bound by a current collective agreement; and * The parties involved have already negotiated for at least 40 days; and * In the case of the essential services listed in the act, the notice requirement has been met. Overall, the recent Employment Relations Act has achieved a safe guideline for employments issues negotiations between employees and employers. Conclusion (not quite finished yet) The Employment Relations in New Zealand is supported by legislative set of rules that can be used to resolve disputes between workers and their employers. These disputes can be in individual or collective actions as demonstrated by AFFCO and New Zealand Meat Workers Union’s 3 month conflicts. The long lasting dispute occurred because either AFFCO or NZMWU were willing to compromise its negotiation power. Each one had their own frame of reference theories. AFFCO was defending its own rights as an organisation to have its goals followed by its employees. And NZMWU was purely defending their members against AFFCO’s process developments that would lead to staffing flexibility. Changes in the Employment Acts allowed the grievances of employees and employers to be negotiated between the involved parties without the government’s input. It also created a Good Faith Bargaining environment which reinforces employment relationships based on trust and good faith.

Strategic Role Of Human Resource Management Essay

The human resource management refers to the activities that an organization uses, to implement a labor force in an effective manner; these activities are: the determination of the human resources strategy of the company, recruitment, performance evaluation, the administrative development, and remuneration and labor relations. The strategic role of human resource management in itself is complex in a national company, but it is even more in an international company, where recruitment activities, administrative development, performance appraisal and remuneration are complicated due to the profound differences in the labor markets, culture, legal systems and economic systems, among others. Staffing is one of the activities used by the Human Resources Management, to fill position with in a company with the best resources. Staffing has different approaches; ethnocentric, polycentric and geocentric. Based on the video, Job Abroad, it can be determine that the staffing approach used by the c ompany in Dubai is the geocentric approach. â€Å"Geocentricism involves filling positions at both HQ and subsidiary level with the ‘best person for the job’ regardless of nationality. Nationality and superiority are not related concepts.† (Scullion, 2006, p. 21) When interviewed, Kevin O’Neal, emphasized that the recruiting agency that contacted him, was looking for the best candidate for this position, disregarding in what part of the world he or she was going to be. This is the type of staffingShow MoreRelatedStrategic Role Of Human Resource Management1550 Words   |  7 Pagesincreasing competitive environment organisation needs to focus on the value of investing human resources as a major competitive advantage. It is important to set a HRM to meet those advantages to meet company’s objectives with the flexible environment. 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